Saturday, April 19, 2008

Airleaf Victims Update April 19, 2008

AIRLEAF VICTIMS UPDATE APRIL 19, 2008Dear Airleaf Victims and Friends,We are now at 431 Airleaf Victims. I'd like to wish a Happy Passover to all of our Jewish members of the group.This week, I will be off from my regular job reviewing all of your surveys that you sent to me a couple of months ago in order to identify information to help the government agencies investigating our case. I am hoping to find key documentation that will help us prove the fraudulence that we are claiming. I will let you know some of my results next week.Thank all of you who told me you wrote to 60 Minutes. If you didn't have a chance to do so, please do so this week. Their email address is: 60m@cbsnews.com. I want them to understand the enormity of our case when it comes to fraudulence. Please put in the subject box, "A Victim of Airleaf Publishing Fraud," or something similar. The more stories they receive, the more convincing our campaign will be. Today, the Martinsville Reporter released another update. Our reporter friend, Ron Hawkins, has interviewed a number of people including some former employees who were there during Airleaf's last moments.

Feds investigating Airleaf, former employee says

By Ronald Hawkins | rhawkins@reportert.comSaturday April 19, 2008 Martinsville At least one former employee of the defunct Airleaf Publishing and Book Selling company has been questioned as a part of a federal investigation into the company's practices, according to that former employee. The potential criminal filings against the Martinsville-based, vanity publishing and marketing business would be in addition to the multiple civil actions filed against owner Carl Lau and the company he operated until late last year. In an interview, former Airleaf vice president and sales person Dawn Rodgers said she was questioned on Good Friday by U.S. Postmaster General investigators regarding Airleaf. The investigation is being done in conjunction with the FBI, she said. Martinsville Police Department Capt. Jeff Buskirk, who investigated Airleaf for local law enforcement authorities, said he's turned over his materials to the FBI. Bonnie Kaye, a Philadelphia-based author who started airleafvictims.com, said she'd contacted the FBI about Airleaf. FBI special agent Wendy Osborne, however, said, "The FBI doesn't confirm or deny investigations." An insider's story Former Airleaf vp Rodgers worked for two periods at Airleaf. In the first, she had been promoted to vice president of marketing before she left and in the second was a marketing sales person. She was one of the last employees to leave before Lau shut down the business. Author Kaye said she believes Rodgers shares some of the blame with Lau. "She was taking money under fraudulent pretenses," Kay said. "She continued taking money after production shut down." Rodgers said she is as much of a victim as the Airleaf customers who didn't receive the books or marketing services they were promised. "If anyone's a victim," Rodgers said, "it's me." Rodgers, who is currently unemployed, said Lau still owes her money. "He owes everybody," she said. Lau didn't respond to requests for comments on this story. In a previous interview, however, Lau said after co-founder and Airleaf Executive Vice President Brien Jones left, the business started heading downhill. Lau said Jones, who started his own vanity publishing business in Bloomington, tried to persuade former Airleaf customers not to do business with him. Jones has said that's not the case Rodgers, who worked with Jones, said the business headed downhill after Jones left in January 2007, but the cause was the loss of Jones' skills. The sole bad guy in the story, she said, is Lau. "He didn't have the integrity to run a good business ," Rodgers said. "I wish Carl would accept responsibility for what he did. ... "I don't think Brien was one of the bad guys. He cared about the business. It went crazy after he left. ...I'd like Carl to be held responsible." Rodgers said she believed in Lau until the end, when things began to rapidly unravel. About AirleafAirleaf Publishing and Book Selling was a vanity publishing firm based in Martinsville that published and marketed books. Established nearly six years ago, it shut its 35 Industrial Drive offices in mid-December. Many of Airleaf's authors were previously unpublished. Airleaf offered packages for authors that included printing and for an additional price promised it would pitch books to movie studios. Other packages included promises of ad placements in major newspapers and magazines along with interviews on national radio shows and more."I believed in what I did, otherwise I wouldn't have done it," Rodgers said. "We all did what we had to do. We cared more about the company than Carl." In an interview Thursday, Jones said since he started his own business he's had 400 clients and there have been no complaints. Investigation questioned Jones questioned whether there is an investigation. "No one has ever contacted me," Jones said. "I would think at some point someone would have. ...I would think I would be one of the first people they contacted." Rodgers said the investigators "didn't go into much" about what charges there might be against Law. The founders of Airleaf, which started as Bookman Publishing and Marketing, had good intentions when they started the business, Rodgers said. Most of the marketing promotions such as cruises and appearances at book shows and even pitches to Hollywood studios happened. "I don't believe either (Lau or Jones) started with the intent to defraud," Rodgers said. Martinsville resident Bob Denton is helping some authors receive their books. Denton left Airleaf a month before it closed, he said, but still manages the building and managed it before Lau acquired it. The building is for sale. Denton worked for Lau for 4-1/2 years in sales, product shipping and receiving, he said. Since leaving, Denton started Mountain Valley Publishing, a publishing firm that he operates out of his home and has some of Airleaf's former clients. Denton said he left Airleaf because he knew if he sold a publishing package, the money wasn't there to produce it. Denton agreed with Rodgers and Lau that the business started to decline after Jones left. "At first, it was a good business," Denton said. "It got a lot of people's work published. I don't think they intended to defraud anybody. "They just ran out of money. Why? I don't know. Carl made a lot of bad business decisions." That was the end of the story.Here is my response. Please feel free to post your own response to this story.My name is Bonnie Kaye. I am the organizer of the group Airleaf Victims found at www.AirleafVictims.com. I would like to clarify some of the issues in this story. It's not just a matter of Carl Lau being a bad businessman; it's a matter of his operation knowingly committing fraudulence against our 431 authors. We do hold Lau responsible because he held the purse strings; however, other employees were totally aware that services were not being delivered nor were they ever intended to be delivered. These employees include the ones told by Lau to pretend he was in Europe while he sat behind his desk, never saw an ad in the NY Times or LA Times for Airleaf books, or never waved Bon Voyage to the people who paid for the Carnival Cruise that never was booked. By knowing fraud was going on and not reporting it to authorities, they were participating in it or covering it up. Dawn Rogers claims to also be a victim by comparing the loss of a paycheck to the loss of people's years of hard work, throwing money away down the drain that they saved for their futures, and the pain of calling dozens of times and being ignored because services were not being delivered. Let's be for real. Ms. Rogers was there until the very last day begging people for their credit cards selling them packages that were never going to happen--and she knew it. Let's not turn the bad guys into the heroes and the victors into the victims. The employees of Airleaf profited off of our innocence. Two of them for sure were in Hollywood having great sex in a hotel while they were supposed to be selling our books to Hollywood producers. Those escapades were paid for by our hard earned money.Everyone who took part in misleading us should be ashamed of themselves. So far, I haven't heard anyone say a simple, "I'm sorry." That might be a good starting point. If ex-employees are looking for pity, this is not the place to find it. Start taking responsibility for your action, and maybe then maybe we'll feel something besides contempt.Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.That's the end of my story! Here's the link for the paper in case you would like to post your own comments:Link to Martinsville Reporter story: By the way, Bob Denton has changed his email address and wanted me to share that with you. You can reach him at: bdenton308@comcast.net. If you sent Bob an email recently and didn't get a response, please resend it to that address because it may have gotten lost in transition.One of our readers wrote to me stating that Carl Lau sent her back a disk but it was blank. She was wondering if any of our other authors had the experience. If so, please let me know. Another author sent me a note that Carl Lau was requesting $2.50 per book. Once again, if you are being asked for money for your books by Carl Lau, please let me know.This week, I'd like to introduce two new books by our Victim's group. The first book is by John Krismer. John used my new publisher, CCB Publishing, for his book (CCBPublishing.com). Here is the cover and synopsis:

Few realize a New World Order plans to replace our constitution with a Single World Government, nor that our Federal Reserve Bank is privately owned and is not subject to oversight by Congress or the President. Its stockholders include the Rockefellers, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers of New York; the Rothschild’s of London and Berlin; the Lazard Brothers of Paris; Israel Seiff of Italy; the Kuhn & Loeb Company of Germany; and the Warburgs of Hamburg and Amsterdam, earning almost two billion dollars a day in interest as they buy off our dysfunctional Congress and intentionally level this great nation. George H. W. Bush, the undisputed “Overlord” of the Shrub Dynasty, in his State of the Union Message in 1991 said: “What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea – a new world order.” Did We the People ever agree to this treasonous act of turning over our nation’s sovereignty to a Single World Government?

About the AuthorJohn R. Krismer, MHA-LFACHE is founder and CEO of Health Systems Institute, consulting with governments, hospitals, clinics, and professional organizations. He has conducted hundreds of educational institutes, and served as a principal investigator, researching the health record database system, which involved four major universities. He has served as CEO of several hospitals and corporations, and as a board member of two health insurance companies. He has been referred to as a visionary ahead of his time. Another one of our victims, Terry Levine, has a new book that will be available on the first day of May. Terry is a well-known personal coach, and you can view her website at http://www.CoachInstitute.com. Terry sent this note: I am asking you for one favor please. My new book Coaching is For Everyone is available on Amazon.com on May 1 and is by far my most exciting and best book yet. My request is that you help me make this book an Amazon.com best seller on May 1. I am not asking you to buy a bunch of stuff - just one copy of a book that you will love and if you just send me (Terri@TerriLevine.com) your receipt from Amazon.com I will send you a FREE ticket to my next event worth $500!Please ask everyone in your network, in your data base and email lists to do this for me. Together, on the May 1st release date, we can really ring the bell in the coaching world and make my pride and joy a number 1 bestseller on amazon.com. I appreciate you and your assistance in making my dream come true and sharing my finest work with the world. Here is the link to my book on amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Everyone-Learn-Your-Coach/dp/1600373968/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208296251&sr=8-2

My Goal Is YOUR Success!Terri Levine, The Guru of Coaching SMPresidentComprehensive Coaching U, Inc.727 Mallard Place, North Wales, PA 19454 Phone:877-401-6165 Create a great home based business coaching clients over the phone!Visit http://www.CoachInstitute.com today! Good luck to both of our new authors. I'm happy to publicize any new books that you are creating. Just let me know! Next week I'll report on more news with our case. Have a good week, and keep up the faith. Justice will be ours!Love, Bonnie

I'm not sure what an "ad hominem" that the anonymous party stated is, but let me rephrase my comment about the former employees "having great sex." I would like to apologize for making assumptions, so I'll correct it by just saying "having sex." The "great" description was obviously the assumption on my part.